Dr Eleanor Maguire believes that taxi drivers’ brains grow on the job.
The discovery implies that the brain changes physically in order to adapt to certain situations. These findings may have an impact on the treatment of mental illness.
Research has shown that the part of the brain associated with navigation, the hippocampus, appears to be larger in the brains of taxi drivers.
Black cab drivers in London are perhaps faced with one of the most complex inner-city road systems in the world – it’s no wonder that learning their way around expands their brains!
Maguire has explained that there is a ‘definite relationship between the navigating they do as a taxi driver and the brain changes … The hippocampus has changed its structure to accommodate their huge amount of navigating experience’.
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